A venture capitalist and ex-Gateway CEO, Snyder chose young ex-banker and ex-vice GOP chair of the Michigan House Tax Policy Committee Brian Calley as his lieutenant governor, and in doing so indicated a Snyder administration that was all business – serious about getting Michigan’s fiscal house in order. It was a glaring contrast to the chaotic, activist years of Governor Jennifer Granholm, who lurched from budget crisis to budget crisis while transferring millions of dollars to her rich green cronies for alternative-energy projects.

Sound familiar?

The AP had its typically political takeon the announcement, speculating that Ryan is Romney’s conservative bone for the GOP base. But the MSM fails to understand that, like Snyder, Romney is a businessman who sees the federal government as a turnaround job. Ryan, like Calley for Snyder, is his legislative liaison and COO.

Romney and Ryan are — true to the Bain Capital founder’s private-equity roots — auditioning as CEO and COO of a federal government in need of fixing, just as Ardesta Capital founder Snyder and Calley have been CEO and COO to Michigan’s dramatic fiscal turnaround.

The Ryan choice signals Romney’s focus on the nation’s economic emergency, which is on course not just for the worst economic recovery in post-WWII history, but also for a European-style debt crisis. Ryan also signals that Romney is not timid about making the hard choices: The House Budget Committee chair’s plan is an unblinking effort to take on essential entitlement and tax reform.

Of course, Obama will demagogue Romney-Ryan as heartless, outsourcing-to-China Scrooges out to take away grandma’s Medicare. It is the same playbook Democrats used against Snyder in the 2010 governor’s race. But like Snyder, Romney and Ryan are likeable, patient pros who eschew divisive rhetoric because they want to get things done. And just as Ryan signals Romney’s comfort with a younger generation of reformers, so too did Snyder’s pick reach into the bench of young-gun talent in the Michigan Republican party.

I told you the similarities are uncanny.

Two years after Snyder-Calley were elected, the personal, mean-spirited attacks on his success seem irrelevant to the remarkable turnaround One Tough Nerd has delivered for the state. Romney and Ryan promise the same serious leadership for America — if only voters can hear them over the vicious attacks that are coming from Obama and his media henchmen.